Bennie Maupin

Bennie Maupin

Bennie Maupin has had a distinguished jazz and R and B career both as a reed player (all saxes, piccolo/flutes, and clarinets) and a composer.

In addition to recording three solo albums of his own on Polygram and ECM, Bennie has recorded and performed with the most important names in jazz: among them Miles Davis, Wayne Shorter, John McLaughlin, Lee Morgan, McCoy Tyner, and Horace Silver.

After playing bass clarinet on Miles Davis’s landmark Bitches Brew album, a performance which not incidentally re-introduced this versatile but neglected instrument to contemporary jazz, Bennie joined Herbie Hancock’s innovative Sextet, where for several years he was both a featured soloist and an important contributor to the band’s play book, most notably “Water Torture,” a composition since recorded by many other jazz artists and a frequently sampled source for hiphop and rap. He has appeared on many albums of Herbie’s, most significantly Headhunters. Crossings’ and Sextant–albums now regarded as seminal statements of the best electronic jazz.